Magister Luminash Dawnwing

Captive Audience

(continued from The Waiting)

The air reeked of death, still thick with fog, a cold and damp that permeated everything it touched, tendrils seeping into torn, burned, and bloodied tents, a shroud for the bodies of Reliquary diggers, fingers still wrapped around their makeshift weapons, bodies pincushions for Kaldorei arrows, Thalassian guardians, their armor torn to pieces by worgen claws, and the Alliance attackers themselves - a mingling graveyard of Gilneans, Kaldorei, fiery-haired Dark Iron dwarves, and a handful of the Ren’dorei traitors. The soil, too, reeked of blood. Already damp, it had become a frothing marsh of blood and filth, discarded weapons and mangled bodies peering from the torn earth.

How many had died here, Luminash wondered. Too many of his people, certainly, and not enough of those who had descended upon them in the night. It was dawn now, and the groans of those who had been left in the muck had finally ceased - the Alliance, it seemed, had no compunction against throat-cutters, at least out here, far from the watchful eyes of high command. Why, then, did Luminash remain?

There came a rustling from the tent-flap - his own tent-flap. The magister raised his head, dark-ringed eyes squinting in the new light. The blindingly illuminated fog from outside revealed his own robes and armor plating torn and shattered, and smeared with dirt from the ground he had been thrown onto. He struggled to sit upright, and turn his chin up proudly to greet whoever entered, although his arms bound tightly behind him, wrapped around the wooden post in the tent’s center, rather reducing the aura of dignity he tried to display.

The light from outside blinked out, the flap shutting behind the one who entered. Luminash could not make out a face or form, backlit as the figure had been, but now he saw clearly. His golden eyes grew wide, and face, already pale and haggard from exertion, grew paler still. Before him, one hand held behind his back, the other holding a broken bronze-cast mask with androgynous features, was one of the Ren’dorei. His clothing, midnight violet, black, and gold, was a mockery of the Thalassian phoenix, his pallid skin and hair tapering into tendrils of the Void a mockery of the Light that infused the rest of his people.

The void elf approached calmly, slowly, his stride and posture entirely in control. He passed by Luminash, bound as he was, tossing the broken mask onto the packed dirt floor as he did. Behind the magister, he stopped.

“It is a shame we could not meet under more pleasant circumstances, Magister Dawnwning. You may call me Lithendras, Rift Warden.”

Luminash grimaced to hear the Ren’dorei’s Thalassian echoing with the otherworldly presence of the Void saturating his form.

“Oh, of course…” Luminash coughed, his lips cracked, tongue parched, “More pleasant circumstances. Such as not, perhaps, slaughtering a camp full of civilians?” The magister spat out his last words, venom dripping from his lips.

The other elf responded only with a hollow laugh, “Is that what you think we did here? What sort of fool do you take me for, Magister? Civilians need not fear the Alliance, and between your guard, and your team of illusionists and arcanists, your camp was hardly civilian…” The Ren’dorei circled around the post, back into Luminash’s limited field of view, and crouched, nearly face-to-face with the magister, “Was it, really?”

Luminash set his jaw, and matched his golden gaze to the other’s pale, eerie blue, “This was a research expedition, filled with non-combatants and only enough guards to ward off the blood trolls. You saw our forces - you slaughtered them all, you no doubt swallowed them up in the Void. How many were there? Less than fifty in all? Or did you even waste your time to find out?” The magister’s voice grew lower, slower, more deliberate as he went on, his eyes narrowing defiantly.

The other only allowed a slight, secretive smile spread across his face, “Time was short.” The Rift Warden tilted his head, as if listening to something only he could hear, “Is short, I should say. Truthfully, we wanted to be long gone by now, Magister, but you set us back considerably.”

The Sin’dorei managed a laugh, even in the face of his captor, “Good! I can only hope the lot of you are swallowed up in this swamp on your way out.”

Raising a brow, the Void-drenched elf stood, turning his back to the magister and crossing his hands behind it, “You may wish to reconsider that statement. You will be counted among our number, after all. That said, however, it was quite the impressive display, both of magic and of tactics. We chose well.”

Luminash blanched at this, and shook his head, the realization falling into place. The attack’s first stages, weakening the defenders, the next intended to quickly remove remaining resistance - whatever was left - and now his captivity.

“Your work, your keen mind for theory, language, history… We have been watching you for some time, even since before more short-sighted kin cast us out of our homeland. How, we wondered, could someone so open to the world, the possibilities all around him, remain a blind follower of the cult of the Light and its absolutes? Then, driven away from our ancestral homes, we asked how even a single one of the Children of Blood could still slavishly follow the will of a Warchief so deeply in service to Death?”

“You are here for me, then. All of them, all of those people…” Luminash lowered his head, the strength - what little there was left after the battle - of his limbs draining away, “You killed them all… For what, exactly? A new trophy? Or a resource?” The magister’s gaze alone remained on his captor, “For whom, I wonder? Your boy king - a Thalassian magister, one of the elite, the pride of Quel’Thalas - or for your Windrunner, so deeply in service to that which swallows all things?”

The Rift Warden turned just enough to peer over his shoulder at the bound mage, a smirk on his lips, “For whom? For the people of Quel’Thalas. Your people, our people, and the endless possibilities your work could bring about. Do you not wish to see us - Sin’dorei, Quel’dorei, Ren’dorei - whole again, reunited in common purpose?”

“You are not my people any longer, Lithendras. You forfeit that right when you and your kind nearly snuffed out the Sunwell. Do you remember it, Rift Warden? The hunger, the need?” Luminash asked, voice growing firm, “The fear? And you would have brought it all back!”

“That is but one path. We have seen…” The Ren’dorei moved, now, striding towards Luminash’s desk, still covered in his expedition notes, “So many more. You speak of the Sunwell as an absolute, your precious, endless fount, but it is a single point in space, a cosmos so vast as to make the mind reel. How freeing it is, to lose yourself in that. It is how our people should be: bright, curious minds unfettered by the limits imposed upon them by our own hand.” He shifted some of the scrolls, picking up a loose page covered in diagrams of incomplete Titan mechanisms some of the diggers had found days before.

“And how many of those paths you saw showed you the Alliance crushing the life out of Quel’Thalas at last? Your own people, Child of the Void, your own, and you would hand them over to their enemies!”

“The Alliance need not be the enemies of Quel’Thalas, Magister, you know this. Or have you already forgotten how close you came to the Alliance when Warchief Hellscream threw your lives away on Pandaria? I was there, then, you know.” He rolled up the scroll and tucked it under his arm before shifting more, searching through the papers, “I saw your Horde for what it is: a force of destruction, callous and unrelenting.”

Luminash, still stunned, shook his head, face blank and voice resigned, “It is a force dedicated to our freedom, our survival. It must be, in a world that would see us wiped away, or have you forgotten Garithos? Or - speaking of the Pandaria campaign - Proudmoore and her Silver Covenant lackeys, the streets of Dalaran running red with our people’s blood?”

Lithendras rolled another paper into a scroll - this one covered in Luminash’s survey notes, outlining potential locations of Titan relics outside Uldir in the swamps - and scoffed, “The Sunreavers cast their lot in with Hellscream. Perhaps the response was too strong, too immediate, but its message was clear: serve destruction, and a price will be exacted.”

The magister let his chin fall to his chest, “What, then, is the price your traitorous lot must pay? The Void seeks to swallow us all. You may have seen what you think the Horde is, but I have seen what the Void is, on Argus.”

The Rift Warden turned, quirking a brief smile, “You will see so much more than that once we have returned to Telogrus. The power there, the knowledge you will uncover, the visions you will witness, they will show you possibilities undreamed of.” He gathered up another scroll; Luminash could not tell which any longer.

“But why? Why do this, why go through all the trouble of seeking me out here, of slaughtering my people, all to drag me back to your Void-blasted rock?”

“We believe in your value, Magister Dawnwing, to your people - your true people, those who are in service to knowledge unending, just as you are, not those in service to Death - and to the Alliance and its goals: peace and unity, above all else.”

“If you believe in my value so much, at least have the decency to grant me a simple request before we leave.” Luminash forced his head up again, golden gaze piercing as it met the blue of the Rift Warden, “Either leave me here to die, or muster the courage to kill me yourself. I will not serve you, your people, or your Void, and nothing you do or say here will change my mind.”

For a moment, just a short moment, Lithendras’ composure slipped, his affable smile giving way to the briefest suggestion of a grimace, before he regained control. He simply shook his head, “I am afraid I cannot grant that request, Magister. I am not the architect of this plan, and I have my orders. You are to-”

The Ren’dorei stopped abruptly as a shuffling at the tent-flap heralded a Dark Iron scout’s entrance, her black hair flecked with glowing coals, wreathed in the gentle glow of flame, “Warden, we’ve got ourselves a problem.” Her burning gaze flickered to Luminash for a moment, then to the void elf, and back outside - the fog, Luminash noticed, had lifted. Unnaturally quickly, in fact, “They must have reached the Scepter. We’re out o’ time, and we don’t move, th’ Horde’s gonna roll right over us. We’ve got an emergency mole machine prepped and ready for th’ officers, but th’ rest…” She trailed off, shaking her head, “Come on!”

Lithendras cursed under his breath - Luminash could not make it out, but it was not a tongue he knew, its sounds warped, twisted, unnatural. He looked back at his prisoner, then grasped at the table, dragging a few more papers with him as he swept out of the tent behind the scout.

From outside, as the magister’s chin fell to his chest, his robes soaked and cold from the swampy ground, his strength gone, his mind consumed by a simple question - did they die for me? - he heard the Rift Warden’s voice.

“Until we meet again.”